Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Contemporary students may experience the university as being distributed across places and domains.Studying by help of laptops and even smart phones implies that they are no longer tied to campus (a central point) or to commuting between home and campus (a line) or between separate buildings of a decentralized university (a flat network).Studying is now an arrangement within which individuals and activities seek to gear themselves to one another.Educators and researchers have already made this experience for a long time, as we have always been collaborators in multiple teams within one institution and/or across several.Even if living in one's university town or having a predictable commute, one travels zigzaggingly for guest lectures, research meetings, archival, field, and library research, on-site committee work or conferences.Still, something has changed post-COVID and we feel a more fundamental shift is under way towards a university that may even go beyond the »mode 3 networked university«. 1 Although in some fields of research, like high-energy physics, this kind of doing university has been established for a long time, 2 it now seems to become the signature of all faculties and research fields.This is a shift towards the virtual university.As fundamental as this shift appears to be, it is not an easy one to grasp.It is certainly not limited to a ubiquitous use of Internet communication technologies or the digitisation of university administrative, research, and teaching structures.And yet another important insight emerged when the pandemic forced academics to go digital: The university has always been an institution of potentials, of as-if, of experiments, of systematized experiences and their deconstructions, and of virtuality.Way before the advent of smart learning management software or hybrid teaching scenarios the university has dealt with the virtual: Ever since its foundation it has been a place where one's own, other, becoming, fantastic and utopian worlds, societies, forms of knowledge, natures and technologies are scrutinized, 1 Matthews, Adam (2024): »The Mode 3 Networked University
Source: transcript Verlag eBooks
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7211940887